Dmitri Petrov, Ph.D.

Petrov was born in Russia, where he earned his undergraduate degree in physics and biology. He received his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology under the guidance of Richard Lewontin and Daniel Hartl from Harvard University in 1997. He was a junior fellow at Harvard from 1997 to 2000 before starting his own lab at Stanford University in 2000, where he is now a Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of Biology. The Petrov Lab focuses on understanding the process of rapid adaptation from standing genetic variation and de novo mutation in a range of systems and ecological contexts, including experimental evolution in yeast, studies of seasonal adaptation in flies, cancer in vertebrates, and eco-evolutionary dynamics of large mammals in the African savanna.